erik lundegaard

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Wednesday November 20, 2019

The John Dean Moment

We used to have to wait a day for headlines like these—or at least until the afternoon newspaper, kids—but now it plays out in real time. Along with the denials and obfuscations and general muddying of waters. That's all the GOP has these days: mud to add to otherwise pretty clear water. It's becoming apparent to more and more people what should‘ve been obvious a long time ago: Donald Trump is a crook.

The Times’ subhed is just as important: Pence and Pompeo. Frick and Frack. Or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? Nah, that's letting them off too easily. 

The Times has a piece on the five key things we learned from Gordon Sondland's testimony, some of them direct quotes:

  • “We followed the president's orders”: Meaning it was a Trump operation all the way.
  • “Everyone was in the loop,” including the aforementioned Pence and Pompeo. (This reminds me of Woodward's line in “All the President's Men”: “Everyone was involved.”)
  • Trump's goal was to get the Ukranians to announce the investigation (Is this a new thing? It was certainly between-the-lines in everything we already knew).
  • Good god, yes, to quid pro quo.
  • This was the only foreign policy vis a vis Ukraine. The backchannel was the channel. 

I‘ll keep reading. It’s a bad day for Fox News, Rush, the GOP, et al.; it's a good day for American democracy. To me, it's not even a partisan thing. There's joy today because some truth got out.

Posted at 12:11 PM on Wednesday November 20, 2019 in category Politics